Harris
“The motor industry does itself no favours by lurching en masse into technology”
How times have changed Eight years ago I wandered around the Geneva motor show mentally making plans to pursue a new career in underwear modelling! The post" Lehman motoring landscape was catastrophic for anyone who loved fast cars and the speed with which most auto brands disowned any kind of performance message was frankly pathetic! Everyone I spoke to said the fun was over! No fast cars meant no stories and no videos! I was bereft! A man from Ford said I would never again attend the launch of a fast# chav" spec Focus! “Thank Henry# he was talking out of his arse#” I thought as I wandered through Ford’s stand a few weeks back $ a stand which was crammed full of very fast Fords# past and present!
If the warning of total fast "car annihilation was always over" dramatic# even the most optimistic petrolhead couldn’t have predicted the position we’re in now! Performance cars have never been so prevalent or interesting! Everywhere you looked in Geneva’s halls# there was something a little lower# or wider or carrying a few more body additions than a standard" looking car!
There are two reasons for this! The first is that the motor car is inherently unsexy and performs a menial role in people’s lives $ and the best way to make it appear sexy is to make a fast version and have people swoon all over it! Then they’ll buy more of them! The other is that car companies are mainly populated by engineers and# as a species# the engineer struggles to leave things in an ordinary state! It has to fiddle and tweak and inevitably make things faster! No coincidence that Honda was the quickest to distance itself from any kind of performance message back in %&&'! Remember the squalid CR" Z# and the brain "fart moment when the F( car was renamed “Earth Car”? Judging by the size of the spoilers on the new Civic Type R# so does Honda!
Part of the reason why this is now such fertile territory is the level of fragmentation! Yards away from each other you had Koenigsegg selling a production" ready electric hypercar and Porsche announcing with some pride that it had just fitted a manual gearbox to a normally aspirated '((! What a wonderful mess! No one has the correct answer because none of us quite understands what the question might have been! Or will be!
But the motor industry does itself no favours by lurching en masse into technology alleyways like a faddish teenager! One minute diesel is the answer) the next it’s a pariah! We’re all in the process of downsizing because we were told to do so last year# sprinkling a few turbochargers on top to keep things spicy! But now the boss of VW says that was all silly and that downsizing is over! Best buy an R* V(& Plus and forget the (!&" litre v "twin Touareg that was in the pipeline!
We’re told an electric future is inevitable# but I’ve not seen a usable framework for a national infrastructure to support such a colossal shift in our travel habits! I’m allergic to the Prius but# all things considered# for both fast and slow cars# some kind of petrol/ electric hybrid appears to be the most sensible solution! Especially if it fits in a Porsche Panamera Sport Turismo and tops ('&mph!
The future’s bright# but the present is unprecedented! Ferrari will sell you an *&&bhp normally aspirated V(% coupe# the McLaren +%&S is faster than a neutron and Aston Martin has just named its hypercar the Valkyrie! It’s a V(% too! We’ve never had it so good!